


caught up in the meaning of it all

by romanitas



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 14:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10120889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanitas/pseuds/romanitas
Summary: Cassian thinks about kissing Jyn a few times before he actually brings himself to do it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: OK I HAVE A PROMPT IF U LIKE. Jyn x Cassian, five times they don't kiss (and maybe one time they do?)
> 
> so basically a 5 times + 1 fic. everybody lives because i said so.

_**one**._

He almost kisses her on the elevator.

Cassian knows he’s going to die. He’s surprised he’s still alive now. He can’t feel his leg but he can feel the adrenaline, just like he can feel Jyn’s arm around him like a brace, a cane, a support he never wanted to need but is glad to have. The elevator is dark and Cassian is bleeding out, which is the way he always assumed he’d go, unable to staunch his own blood and abandoned because the mission necessitated it.

He just always thought he’d be alone. But ever since he met Jyn, he finds himself crawling back to her again and again; it seems only fitting that now as they walk to their death, she’s beside him, a missing piece he gave up looking for.

It isn’t that he loves her. Cassian has had years of practice in ignoring his own feelings and burying them in his chest. Time is not on his side, the rush of meeting Jyn Erso a maze from start to finish. The truth is he didn’t do it because he doesn’t love her. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t.

They could have been, should have been, would have been –

_Could have, should have, would have –_

It seems unfair to kiss her when he only gets to do it once. He’d rather die not knowing the regret of a future in which he could have kissed her again. Instead he just watches her in the elevator and gets lost in the look on her face, like every single thought she’s having is a reflection of his own, and they’ve always circled each other like a mirror. Her hands are small and shaking and it’s the most vulnerable he’s seen her since Eadu and a lifetime of people screwing her over.

She carries him out onto the beach and he smiles into the sun, like he isn’t walking to his own funeral pyre, and he doesn’t think about what it would be like to kiss her. He could, he almost does, but it’s a waste.

He thinks about who is listening instead and wonders who received the plans as he collapses into the sand, unable to go further despite Jyn taking most of his weight. Cassian looks back at her face, the blood and scratches and the smile on it, because maybe he didn’t ever get the chance to kiss her, but at least he’s not alone anymore.

He gets to spend the rest of his life with her.

 

_**two**._

 

He wakes up with a jerk, and a sharp intake of breath that makes it feel like his lungs are on fire. Instead of sand and heat, Cassian tastes metal and sterilization. Instead of wind and ocean, there’s beeping and the quiet of machines.

He smells like bacta. He can’t feel his leg. He doesn’t know how to process anything except that he is, apparently, alive. Cassian lays there with the revelation for time he forgets to count, uncomprehending. He can’t even taste Yavin 4 on his tongue, the humidity absent.

Someone slips into his room, and the instinct to pull up his blaster sinks into his muscles, but he only manages to wobble his arm and knock over the glass of water on the side table.

She gasps, quiet and quick. “You’re awake,” Jyn whispers, like she can’t believe it.

Cassian finds her eyes in the dark, and she looks spooked, as haunted as she does happy. His throat feels dry, but he’s just knocked over his drink. Jyn seems to know, scrambling over and pouring him another with ease, offering it out without a word. She hovers at his bedside while he drinks it, the silence familiar and not unwelcome.

“The Death Star is gone,” she whispers suddenly, unable to hold it in any longer. She doesn’t ask him how he’s feeling, but he appreciates it, because how does he answer a question he has no idea about?

“What?” The word is hoarse on his lips. It’s the first time he’s used his voice since – however long it’s been.

Jyn wrings her hands, having some sort of internal argument, before she sits down on his bed, as close to the edge as she can manage without falling off. “You’ve been out for a while. About a week. They got the plans.”

It all seems to cement the fact that he’s alive, but Cassian doesn’t know how to even begin taking that apart. He moves his hand instead, reaching out for hers, and she takes it after a moment, almost like she’s afraid to. “We’re alive,” he says at last, like he needs vocal affirmation to prove it, even with her calloused fingers winding through his.

“I could explain it, but it seemed more important to tell you the Rebels have destroyed the Death Star. Just now. An hour ago, maybe. I wasn’t – I didn’t think you’d be awake, but I thought you might have liked to know anyway.”

“I’m going to ask you everything,” he says, squeezing her hand, “But I need to figure out where to begin first.”

“You could start with Scarif,” she suggests with a shrug. She uses the shrug as an unclever impetus to move herself closer.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start with Scarif,” he admits, and she gives him a crooked grin. He closes his eyes and breathes in again, acknowledging the fact that the Death Star is gone. It’s the most he can let himself process without feeling overwhelmed. “Help me sit up.”

If Jyn is surprised by the demand, she doesn’t show it, and she seems unconcerned about breaking any hospital rules. Together and slowly, he gets himself sitting up in the bed, stretching long stiff limbs and sighing with the painful relief of it. She’s still holding his hand and sitting close enough now that he can trace the lick of a healing burn wound up the side of her face. He reaches out to touch it, then pauses with his hand a few inches from her cheek.

“Scarif?”

The smile she gives him is wry, and even though she’s trying to sound blasé, her tone is quietly anxious. She never talks this much. “You should have seen your back. I thought I was doing you a favor, keeping you from seeing the explosion.”

Cassian leans in with a sigh, and she meets him halfway, foreheads together. “One day, death is really going to get us,” he says quietly, smiling.

“I’m really good at running,” she offers.

He moves on instinct, nose brushing against hers, and he can hear the way she draws in a quick breath. Scarif is behind them, and he could kiss her now, couldn’t he? It wouldn’t have to be the last one.

He waits too long. Jyn pulls away, and he catches sight of the way she looks both scared and wanting. He suspects his own face reflects the same combination.

“Wait till you see Bodhi’s burns,” she says, and even though she hasn’t let go of his hand, the moment has passed with the mention of Bodhi. But he doesn’t mind – he’s grateful for the information that someone else made it out too. Time is ahead of them now. “Apparently Scarif thought we should all match.”

 

_**three**._

 

He’s cleared for active duty after a month and a half. Cassian spent about half of that in the makeshift hospital, and the nurses eventually gave up trying to keep him in place once he started walking on his own again. He spends the rest of his time obeying the commands of his physical therapist and coordinating whatever Intelligence efforts he can from a datapad and a captain’s authority.

Jyn hovers while he heals, running between him and the rest of Rogue One as she tries to find her place in the Rebellion. She helps him build up his strength, and they don’t talk about Scarif or the scars they wear across their skin, or the way he touches her more than he used to. A shoulder tap, a hand on her back to guide her through a doorway, resting on her thigh while they eat in the mess hall. Cassian is anxious to get back into action, but he is going to miss this. Her.

“They’re starting me on supply runs with Bodhi,” she says. He already knows but he pretends he doesn’t. Jyn wrinkles her nose, like she’s not exactly happy about this. “I get it. I do. But it’s annoying. I could be doing more.”

“We all start somewhere,” he says, kicking idly at her leg from where they sit at the edge of the fountain.

She kicks back. “I leave tomorrow.”

“I leave in an hour.”

Jyn stiffens, frowning in a way that suggests she’s trying to ignore it.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. I already told you I was leaving today.”

“Shut up.”

He grins, a strange happy feeling on his lips. She grabs his hand, aggressively, and they sit in a silence he tucks away to remember for comfort later. Cassian thinks there are probably a lot of things he could say to carry on a conversation, but there isn’t anything else like just sitting with another person who has learned all the terrible parts of you and sticks around anyway.

He loves her, he thinks. He’s getting there.

Time ticks forward, and eventually he needs to go. When he stands up suddenly, Jyn follows suit and doesn’t let go of his hand. She looks at him, considering, and then steps in to wrap her arms around him in a hug. It takes him a second to return it, because while hugging Jyn is becoming more and more common, hugs in general are not a habit he’s ever _needed_ to get used to before. He slips his arms around her waist and tugs her in close, tucking his head beside hers and breathing in. Her hands grip into his shirt, wrinkling the fabric as she buries her face into his chest.

“When do you get back?” she mumbles, so quiet he almost misses it.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s scheduled for a two day return, and she knows that too, but the honest answer needs to slip in between them, wedging apart the hug enough for him to look at her face. He lifts his hand to her cheek, thumb gentle over the burn scar that etches down her skin. Medical technology has faded it quickly enough that it now looks like an old war wound, the coloration only a shade or two darker than her normal tone.

She looks like she wants him to kiss her. Her eyes are wide and hopeful and she’s close enough that it wouldn’t be any effort.

But it would be a goodbye. He presses his lips to her cheek instead, to the scar. If she’s disappointed, there’s no sign of it. She closes her eyes and puffs out a short sigh, but she smiles at him. “I’ll see you,” she says.

He likes it. It’s not a goodbye, and it’s not a promise. “I’ll see you,” he says back, and she steps out of his arms, holding on to his hand until his fingers slip away from the distance.

 

_**f**_ _**our**._

 

Cassian can’t really pinpoint when they started sleeping together, and he only means that in the most platonic sense of the word. The Alliance has no new central base yet, just a string of hot spots scattered between units, half of which he never sees as missions take him across the galaxy. He misses the familiarity of Yavin 4, but he hesitates to say it was _home._ The Rebellion is home, and Cassian follows it wherever it takes him.

Sometimes it lets him sleep in his own bed. His bed moves around as often as he does, but it’s always better when he gets to sleep as himself, tucked away in a base, rather than on a planet crawling with Imperials. He just knows that sometimes Jyn crawls into bed with him, and they should probably talk about it, but even the Force knows they could both use a good night’s sleep more than they could use an evening to awkwardly dance around the subject.

They tend to sleep back to back. Jyn faces the wall. Cassian always faces the door. They’ve got a system, one that lets them spend more time together, even if they aren’t always awake for most of it. He told her welcome home all those weeks ago, and now it feels like he’s coming home every time she’s there waiting for him.

He usually wakes up first, but whichever one of them blinks awake tends to stir the other. They’re too in tune with their surroundings, too close to one another to miss it.

He wakes up one day to her nose pressed into his back, her arm draped over his waist, and her other hand fisted into his nightshirt. The more startling part than the fact that it’s happening is that he didn’t notice when she did it in the first place. He finds himself smiling, and slowly, tentatively, he brings up his hand and puts it over hers.

Her posture shifts, and he knows she’s awake now too, but she doesn’t move. He isn’t due to meet with Draven for another two hours, so he just – lays there. After a few minutes, he starts to shift, and Jyn’s arm flies away, but he snatches her fingers to keep her close. He rolls over to face her, dropping her arm back at his waist. She hesitates, but after about ten seconds, she relaxes. She even wriggles in closer.

“Sorry,” she says, without actually sounding sorry.

He reaches out and tucks some hair behind her ear. “No you’re not.”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Well forget it then. I’m not sorry for anything, ever, so don’t ask me for any more apologies.”

Cassian doesn’t laugh, but it’s a close thing, the ghost of it on his lips. “That’s a terrible habit to get into.”

“I have a lot of terrible habits. We both know that.”

“You’re getting better at some of them.”

She huffs, and he just grins. She’s close enough that he feels her breath warm on his face. “You don’t run anymore,” he says.

“You make it easy to stay,” she replies without missing a beat.

It fills him with a warm feeling he doesn’t really know what to do with, even as she looks at him expectantly. And Cassian knows what she’s expecting, because kissing her would be the easiest thing in the world right now.

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t. There isn’t a good excuse this time, except maybe his own fear. He can see in her face when she realizes he’s not going to do it, and part of him expects her to kiss him anyway, but she doesn’t either. She just smiles crookedly at him, then wriggles in, tucking her head under his chin.

His heart thuds a few times before he relaxes with her in his arms, and if that’s how they end up spending the rest of the morning, Cassian is not going to complain. It’s with great regret and reluctance that when the time comes, he pries himself away from her, and she sighs dramatically, clinging to his hand as long as she can. Before he can second guess himself, he leans over and kisses her knuckles. “I’ll see you,” he says, dropping her hand.

“I’ll see you,” she says quietly, and he spares her one last look before slipping out the door.

 

_**five**._

 

He can’t believe it takes him so long to actually spar with her. Cassian has fought alongside Jyn too many times to count, but he’s never brawled _against_ her. Before they even start, he considers all he knows about her style: blunt and brutal, blatantly aggressive. Her impulsiveness is the only thing that makes reading her a challenge, because she has on more than one occasion gone to swing a punch then changed her mind halfway through into a kick. In contrast, he knows he’s harder to interpret, but she knows him so well that she has great reaction time.

It’s exhilarating.

She throws a punch he easily deflects with his arm, and she swings her other arm without hesitation, too fast to block and he has to duck his head. She swings again, wild, and he sidesteps the blow smoothly, coming up behind her. Jyn whirls around and elbows him in the gut, but he takes it to allow himself to grab her arm and toss her to the ground.

Jyn lands with a hard grunt, but she immediately kicks out her legs; he has to jump up to avoid them, and he stumbles over his footing because when he comes back down he doesn’t want to step on them. They agreed no weapons this round, and there is maybe a part of him that wants to rescind the rule next time.

They have an audience. Cassian can hear Chirrut’s distant amused commentary, vague because he’s blocking it out, paired with Bodhi’s easy cheering on behalf of them both. He’s sure Baze has thoughts too, but so far he’s kept them quiet, even if he’s likely full of critique and judgment.

Jyn, for her part, continues the fight with a wolfish grin on her face, and it’s very distracting. Not distracting enough to throw Cassian off balance, but he likes the way it looks on her. She’s back on her feet and back to punching, because Jyn likes to use her fists. She is small, but it doesn’t mean she can’t throw her weight behind it and make it hurt. He’s definitely going to come out of this a little banged up, but so is she. At least these bruises aren’t because he fell several stories.

She stretches her arms out as she watches him catlike. Her shoulders are hunched in like she’s going to pounce, and Cassian knows he’ll only have a few seconds to react once she does. His own stance is far less bouncy, but he prefers it that way: still and cold and stiff. When he’s in a brawl, he always makes his posture seem threatening, even when he’s not about to strike.

But this time he does, lunging forward. Jyn startles for a second before turning her arms in defensively, and he lands a blow near to her shoulder. She takes advantage of how close he is and kicks her leg out, nailing him in the calf. He grunts from the pain of it, but blocks her follow up punch.

“Always so aggressive,” he says, holding her wrist.

She fights to get out of it without breaking her hand. “Always too casual,” she huffs, and instead of trying to pull away from him, she leaps at him.

Cassian stumbles under the weight of her, but his arms wrap around her back and he swings her to keep his balance, spinning and trying to throw her off him. She clings like she has claws, and he swears she’s silently laughing from the rumble of her chest. She starts to move, like she’s trying to climb up him, and he immediately does all he can to hinder it, even though the struggle is making it hard for him to stay on his feet.

She gets high enough that his face gets buried in her stomach, and her grip is like a vice on his shoulders, but Jyn has clearly grown more focused on getting to the top than checking on her balance; it’s easy to grab her hips and throw, only at the last second she wraps her hands around his head, and he has no choice but to go down with her.

He lands on top of her, and immediately he can feel her fighting him off. Propriety might dictate he get off, but as far as Cassian is concerned, they’re still sparring. He cages her in beneath him with his knees and does double arm wrestling duty as she swings her fists again. She lands a blow on his cheek, but he grabs her wrist and slams it to the ground, and then he jabs his forearm to her elbow, keeping her other hand free but unable to reach anything important.

She straight up hisses between her teeth, and Cassian swallows, suddenly aware of how close she is even as her eyes are sparking like a supernova. He really shouldn’t be grappling with the urge to kiss her right now, but it’s harder to be surprised. Jyn’s utter tenacity is one of the reasons he came to like her so much in the first place, spiteful stubbornness even with the odds stacked against her.

For two seconds, he thinks he is going to kiss her. But then he remembers they have an audience. As much as Cassian, begrudgingly, likes them, he’s not interested in letting them see the first time he kisses Jyn.

“I think this round is mine,” he says instead, mouth curling into the smallest of smug grins.

“That’s just the first one,” she says hotly, and he’s stupidly in love.

He rolls off her, and she scrambles to her feet, still brimming with the fight; her hands are curled into fists, and Cassian knows without a doubt that one day soon, he is going to actually kiss her.

 

**_+six_**.

 

Cassian has been off base for two weeks, and when he comes back, Jyn is not there. Nor is Bodhi, but that part doesn’t surprise him; they work as a team more often than not. It’s just the first time she _hasn’t_ been around when he returns, and it startles him how much he notices the difference. It’s been a few months since Scarif, and he notices all sorts of things about Jyn, including the way his feelings have grown back around her.

He goes to sleep in a huff, pretending he’s not grumpy and missing the weight of her next to him. When he wakes up in the morning, he has a few hours before he needs to meet with Draven again, but it’s likely he’ll have another few days to recover, provided there isn’t a sudden emergency. He falls back asleep, because he’s exhausted and alone in his room and doesn’t need to pretend otherwise. He gets lunch with Baze and Chirrut, and the latter carries the conversation well enough for all three of them. Before they part, Baze gives Cassian’s shoulder a squeeze, and he blinks after the guardians as they leave, feeling like he’s just been seen through entirely.

He probably has.

Later after dinner, he sits scrunched at his desk, running over files on his datapad, because even on his days off, Cassian finds it hard to avoid work entirely. It’s all he’s ever known, almost mindless, and the fact that he’s using it as a distraction as much as a necessity right now is not lost on him.

When his door opens suddenly, he jumps, stumbling out of the chair lightning fast, only to stare at an equally spooked and startled Jyn frozen in the doorway. “You’re back,” she says.

“ _You’re_ back,” he replies easily.

“It’s not too awkward, right? Do you want to leave and come back in to find me here instead?”

He finds himself grinning, and Jyn blinks with a flicker of confusion, before letting her own face match his grin. She closes the door behind her and steps further inside, immediately kicking off her boots like she owns the place. He likes it and likes the way she shucks her jacket, tossing it on the chair he just vacated. She belongs here.

Without thinking, Cassian moves towards her and wraps her up in a hug. She jerks for a second with surprise again before easily melting into his arms. “I missed you too,” she mumbles, both begrudgingly and honestly.

He pulls back enough to look at her face, where the burn scar is still dimly prominent, but now there’s a surface scratch on her forehead too. He’ll ask about it, maybe. They always seem to be covered in injuries. “How is Bodhi?”

“Hungry. He’s downing as many rations as he can get away with. Baze will probably share some of his again, you know how he gets.”

Cassian smiles at the thought, of the four of them still here, of Jyn still here with him in this room and the look of contentment on her face, like there’s nowhere she’d rather be. “We could probably tell him to stop.”

“No, I like food. You look happy.”

He hesitates, wondering how he reached this point, this single moment where he has allowed himself to be happy, where that floaty feeling in his chest isn’t being overpowered by fear or the haunting of murder. If it’s being selfish, he deems it acceptable. “I am,” he admits, and he has two seconds to appreciate the giddy shock on her face before he leans in and presses his lips against hers.

She makes a startled noise, and that fear manages to creep in for two seconds before she’s kissing him back, winding her fingers into his shirt like she’s afraid he’s going to stop or leave. Probably leave. Too many people have left her behind. But he can’t possibly imagine leaving Jyn at this point, not when he’s chased after her too often and too dangerously to count.

She tastes like bread and coffee and everything else he’s ever loved about her. His hands tuck at her waist and pull her in tight against him, and he berates himself for waiting so long to do this.

“About time,” she mumbles into the kiss.

“No one was stopping you either.” Even as he says it, he knows it’s not true, because he knows how hard dealing with emotions is for both of them – but it doesn’t mean he can’t tease her anyway.

“Shut up,” she says easily, smiling against his mouth. He likes the way it feels.

It felt odd coming home to an empty room because it wasn’t really coming home, not if Jyn wasn’t there. It’s far less exhausting to accept these feelings than avoid them, and now he’s pretty sure he gets to kiss Jyn as much as he wants – and he’s wanted to, for a long time. She makes him happy, and Cassian almost forgot what that was like.

He feels confident she’ll stick around to keep reminding him.


End file.
